The present invention relates, in general, to devices for holding surgical instruments. Specifically, the present invention relates to surgical instrument holding devices which are sterilizable, which prevent the tips of surgical instruments from becoming damaged, or from injuring surgical and nursing personel during use.
A customary procedure in surgical operating rooms for providing a sterile environment for surgical instruments and for maintaining surgical instruments in a sterile condition until use has been to first, sterilize the instrument in one of many standard procedures, and then to seal the sterile instrument inside a sterile container such as a sterile envelope having at least one transparent surface, to allow operating room personel to visually identify the surgical instrument contained therein, or, to wrap the instrument in what is commonly known as CS wrap, identification of the instruments which are wrapped therein is done by marking the C.S. wrap on the outside.
When the specific surgical instrument within the sterile envelope is required during a surgical procedure, a standard technique for removing the surgical instrument from the sterile envelope is to grasp the portion of the sterile envelope which contains the tip portion of the surgical instrument between the heel portions of the user's hands, to grasp the sterile envelope cover and backing between the thumb and index finger of opposing hands and peel the cover from the backing with a rolling motion of the hands. During this procedure, the tip of the surgical instrument is firmly held between the heels of the user's hands in order to retain it within at least a portion of the sterile envelope.
Due to the inherent nature of the tip portions of surgical instruments which are intended to cut and/or puncture, there has been a strong possibility that the tips of the surgical instruments would cut and/or puncture any non-rigid sterile container such as the sterile envelopes and C.S. wrap being discussed herein. When these sterile containers are punctured, the instrument is no longer considered sterile, the instrument tip may be damaged and require repair, and surgical personel might be injured by the protruding sharpened instrument tip.
Additionally, quite often, the surgical instrument will slide and move within the sterile container to a position which makes the removal of the surgical instrument from the sterile container very difficult. Often, during material handling, this sliding movement will result in the sharpened tip portion of the surgical instrument puncturing or cutting the sterile container, such as the sterile envelope or the C.S. wrap, resulting in the instrument becoming unsterile, as was discussed prior. Both of these eventualities are considered highly undesirable disadvantages.